An Evaluation on the Old Uighur and Chinese Translations of Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra (Between 149th-171st Lines of 15th Chapter)

Abstract

In this study, the remaining part between 149th-171st lines of Chapter 15 titled as sarasvati atl(ı)g t(e)ŋri kızı ötüg ötünmek "the requesting (/presentation) of the goddess named as Sarasvati" is discussed of the sutra book named in Sanskrit Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra, which was a sutra book of Mahāyāna Buddhism (大乘佛教 Dàshèng Fójiào) and translated into Chinese by Yì Jìng and from Chinese into Old Uighur by Shingko Sheli Tutung, known with its Old Uighur name, Altun Yaruq (Golden Light) Sutra. The aim of this study is to make a comparative evaluation by considering two translation texts on the basis of such questions as "Should the translation be verbum e verbu, the word for word or sensum exprimere de sensu, the translation of meaning?" However, it is also aimed to briefly explain some of the basic concepts of Buddhism such as toyın, nom ėligi etc. in the Old Uighur text and 呪 zhòu, 菩提 pútí etc. in the Chinese text, and to reach some conclusions about the translation attitude of Shingko Sheli Tutung on the basis of this sample. Firstly, theoretical information about the subject is presented here. Then, since the path followed in the study was text comparison, the texts of comparative translation in Old Uighur & Chinese of the part between 149th-171st lines of the 15th Chapter of Altun Yaruq and the translations of these texts into Turkish in Turkey were given respectively. Later, the explanations about the texts were made and the results of the comparative evaluation were tried to be presented. In addition, the fragments from Turfanforschung Digitales Turfan-Archiv [Turfan Research Digital Turfan Archive] and Radlov-Malov publication are given in the appendix section at the end of the article so that the researchers can easily access the relevant documents.